GROWTH INDUSTRY ROSE PARADE FLOATS ARE NATURAL BEAUTIES.

Byline: Elise Kleeman Staff Writer

By mid-October, the La Canada Flintridge float was still a skeleton of dark steel.

The only Rose Parade float to be built outdoors, it sat heavily under the bright sun, unattended. Three penguins outlined in pencil steel looked out of place on the hot pavement as they awaited further work.

And yet, Dustin Crumb remained optimistic.

``I'm feeling comfortable,'' he said about the chances of finishing the float on time, ``assuming the weather holds and we don't get any rain.''

Crumb, one of about a half-dozen volunteers who will construct most of this 48-foot floral scene, estimates he spends 800 to 1,000 hours each year on the float, despite also working full time.

``Some of our retired workers would beat me on that,'' he said.

For most people, Pasadena's Tournament of Roses Parade will last only a few hours on New Year's Day. In truth, though, it is a lengthy spectacle of design, construction and decoration that sometimes begins even before the grand marshal motions the parade to life.

``It's definitely a year-round business,'' said Larry Palmer, spokesman for Phoenix Decorating Co., as he stood in a vast workshop a few blocks from the parade route.

Except for a handful of ``self-built'' floats like La Canada Flintridge's, Phoenix Decorating Co. and four other companies are responsible for all of each year's extravagant displays of color, motion and sound.

In the Phoenix work space known as the Rose Palace, nearly all stages of the work are on display.

Palmer walked into a small conference room where float designs lined the walls.

``Most years, before the first of the year we have already sold some of our concepts,'' he said.

Designs can be created to reflect a sponsor company's product or message, or just to dazzle.

In March, after the previous year's floats have been taken apart and the chassis given a thorough tune-up, construction begins.

Phoenix's crew of 35 full-time employees builds about 22 floats a year, and starts with the smaller projects. As these are completed, they are driven with a police escort to a storage facility near the Rose Bowl known as Rosemont.

By mid-October, work was well under way on some of the larger and more complicated sculptures.

The various stages

To one side of the warehouse, workers known as ``shapers'' were forming the outline of a giant frog in thin steel rods. Though far from complete, the four-ton amphibian will eventually be brought to life, leaping and darting out its tongue, by means of the massive system of hydraulics already bolted and soldered in place on the chassis. Nearby, another float was completely assembled. Its steel bones had been wrapped in a skin of window screen and coated with the same thin, white fabric that is found underneath couches. Its base was made of a thick, air-drying foam -- hard enough to walk on, but soft enough to push in the thousands of tiny vases that would hold whole flowers.

The painters were busy a few floats over, putting the finishing touches on a four-story-tall ``Mother Nature.'' Her now-vibrant colors would -- in a few months -- serve as a guide for the more than 16,000 volunteers that descend each year onto Phoenix Decorating Co. to add the final layer of flower petals.

Unaltered beauty

Once the construction is complete, work can finally begin on the floats' final and most famous elements.

``The tournament rules are that everything that's visible has to be organic,'' Palmer said. ``We can chop it up, we can grind it up, we can throw it in a blender.''

Materials displayed in this year's parade include black seaweed, lettuce seed, split peas, cinnamon, corn silk and crushed walnut shells.

No popcorn

None of the materials can be dyed or altered in any other way, though. Popcorn is not allowed, for example, because it has been heated.

``We go through tons of white rice,'' Palmer said. ``We can crush it, we can powder it, we can do all sorts of things with it, and it makes a very nice white.''

The stars of the show, though, are the flowers.

``On a normal year, we will use about 20 million blossoms,'' Palmer said. ``We start ordering flowers in March. You know you're going to need roses, you know you're going to need chrysanthemums, you know you're going to need carnations.''

After the floats are built, their surfaces are measured, and the number of flowers that are needed is calculated using well-established formulas (36 carnations to the square foot!).

Volunteers begin the brunt of the decoration after Christmas, working long days to finish the floats before the first round of judging begins Dec. 30.

By the final judging on Dec. 31, the float must look exactly as it will in the parade, complete with costumed float riders, blaring sound systems and every petal in place.

``That hour before judging is heart-pounding time,'' Crumb said. ``Even if you're ahead of schedule, there's that last little detail you want to do.''

And then, finally, the culmination of thousands of hours of work arrives with the start of the Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year's morning. In a few more hours, it will be over, and thoughts will turn once again to a new year of creations.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, 2 boxes, 2 maps

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Petal POWER

Your guide to the Rose Parade

(2 -- 3 -- color) Left: Weiders work on the American Honda ``Once Upon a Time'' float. Below: Ronald McDonald House Charities' ``Home Sweet Home'' will have parade viewers buzzing on New Year's Day.

(4 -- color) Scott Bradshaw paints a butterfly on the Farmers Insurance float, ``Mother Nature,'' at Phoenix Decorating in Pasadena. The two floats at top left are also by Phoenix Decorating Co.

Walt Mancini/Staff Photographer

Box:

(1) POST-PARADE FLOAT VIEWING

(2) AT-HOME VIEWING

Map:

(1) Pasadena

(2) ROSE PARADE ROUTE

Staff Graphic